His Wildmage: Cadenza
by WantonChef
Summary: PWP excerpt from His Wildmage: Interlude. A Daine/Numair lemon which may stand alone if necessary, sweet but deserved of 'M' rating ;D Set about a year after Realms of the Gods... reviews beloved!


Yay, I wrote it! Sorry it took so long, it was actually INCREDIBLY embarrassing to write, I reserve the right to delete it the next time I'm feeling particularly prudish. If you don't know, this is a PWP set right after chapter 8 in my fic His Wildmage: Interlude. On the other hand, I think it stands alone pretty well. Anyway, hope you enjoy, it was pretty fun to write too. After this I'm probably gonna have some action, so this is the last real bit of romance we should have for at least one or two chapters. I didn't mention anything about Daine's wound 'cause I thought it might get in the way of some necessary lovemaking, but trust me, it's still there... Otherwise, um, obviously it's rated M 'cause it involves (gasp) intimate physical relations between a man and a woman. But if you're reading this, you probably don't care, so enjoy and don't say I didn't tell you! Yeah... hope you like! :)

WC

Daine burst through the door, and stopped so quickly that Numair behind her almost fell over. Gods help them, how could they not have recognized the door to the throne room balcony? Below in the gilded hall, Jon and Thayet held one of their regular audiences, a meeting of local diplomats to err grievances and the like. Usually, Numair sat in on such assemblies, but today... well, today he was otherwise occupied.

Unwilling to delay his passion, Numair rapidly surveyed his surroundings. From where they stood, overshadowed by another tiered balcony, mage and student would only be visible should a member of the royal couple look up at their exact position.

Heedless of the potential for discovery, he spun Daine around, propelling her toward a shadowed pillar. Feeling the cool structure at her back, she in turn tilted her chin upwards, intuitively meeting his hungry lips with her own. Numair kissed her lips, her jaw, the velvety pale flesh of her neck while she shivered against the pillar and lifted her chin to expose even more skin to his fiery touch. Shivering with desire and barely aware of her own wanton movements, she thrust her hips forward to grind against his own. When she felt a knee part her thighs, she moaned audibly.

After some minutes of kissing, Daine came at least partially to her senses, and was dismayed to discover that despite all the mage's attention, they were still both fully clothed. She set out immediately to resolve the particular dilemma. As Numair extended his exploration to her collarbone, she tugged the bottom of his tunic from his breeches. When he paused for a second, she pulled it swiftly over his head, revealing a surprisingly fair chest for such a dark-haired man. Her eyes drunk in a part of him she had only ever glimpsed briefly, despite all their time together on the road.

His shoulders, as she knew, were broad and muscular. But without a tunic to cover them, they were somehow enhanced, rugged and smooth. His tanned chest was smothered in an abundance of soft black hairs, a line of which also extended from his navel into the waistband of his breeches. His stomach was brown and sinewy, surprising for such a lanky man. But Daine could only gape for a second, before the strong arms attached to those shoulders dragged her to the carpeted floor of the balcony.

Despite the aura of innocence Daine would always possess, she was not ignorant about what happened between a man and a woman. What she had not learned from Sarra as a child in Galla, she had picked up from her acquaintances in the Queen's Riders and other armed forces, not to mention some less-than-innocent experiences with Perin. But being with a man like Numair was something entirely new for her. Though she loved and trusted him, she could not escape a slight sense of intimidation.

She was still wedged against the pillar, but now he straddled her thighs, kissed her temple, and reached down to pull her own tunic over her head. Suddenly, Daine was frozen with a fear quite unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Never on a battlefield had she been so conscious of her own body, so desperate to please, and so... what was that feeling, doubt? Oh no, he had removed her tunic and was reaching back to undo her breastband. Her breath, coming rapidly only moments before, now caught in her throat. As the band fell, she heard Numair gasp, and was pleased at the mingled desire and wonder she saw in his eyes.

Slowly, gently, he bent his head to her chest. He kissed softly from the base of her neck downward, causing her to shudder pleasurably. Just before he reached her nipple, he paused, and brought his head back up to meet her eyes. He kissed her deeply on the mouth, as one hand shifted to cup her small pale breast. His thumb began to massage in small circles across the nipple, hardening it, causing her to groan into his mouth.

Suddenly, without conscious thought, Daine drew back and slapped him hard. Thankfully, nobody below in the throne room heard the sound over an argument that seemed to have sprung up between two local lords. But Numair felt the sting of her palm and reared backwards in surprise. Daine couldn't stand to see the way his face fell as he lifted one hand to his red cheek, so she stood up and ran from the balcony.

Alone in the shadows Numair sat still with one palm pressed against his jaw. He could only assume her reaction had been to what he had done, and once again he felt guilt seep into his heart. He had hurt her for the last time. Tomorrow, he would leave to confront Thaqib. And when that was over? Well, he wouldn't come back. He would find some way to stop himself from ever hurting her again, whether it meant permanent exile in the Yamanis, or the even greater permanence of death.

Below in the throne room, Jonathan IV of Tortall felt the pain emanating from the second-tier balcony, where only minutes before he had sensed great pleasure and desire. He looked up from the bickering nobles before him, careful not to alter the calculated look of interested impartiality written upon his handsome features. He reached inside himself, located the bond he shared with his most trusted mage, and sent calming emotions across it. Then he reached out a hand to place upon his queen's. Thank the Gods he had Thayet.

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That evening, a storm moving north from the Great Inland Sea reached Corus at last, true to the predictions of the Royal Weather Mage. Outside sheets of warm rain fell constantly as if some child splashed wildly in his great bathtub in the sky. In the palace gardens, Daine sat on a bench, staring moodily at a toad she held in the palm of her hand. It was to this indifferent amphibian that she expressed her true feelings about the encounter in the throne room. "What's wrong with me, Professor?" The toad, so named for what Daine considered its bookish appearance, gazed up at her solicitously.

"It's not that I didn't want him to continue, or that I was afraid. Professor, I just _reacted_. That's not like me, I don't understand. Maybe... maybe I was remembering. If that's what it was, I have to tell Numair. But he must be so angry right now, will he see me? Should I go to him?" She stopped talking and gazed ruefully at the creature in her hand. He blinked back at her with intelligent, liquid black eyes. "Oh, Professor, I have to tell him what happened. He has to believe that I would never intentionally hurt him, that I would die before hurting him, that I'm finally ready to be his completely," when she trailed off, the toad leapt from her hand and disappeared into a clump of rose bushes, while fat raindrops continued to burst on the ground around her. How she envied him his lack of emotion.

High above, Numair relished the feeling of the warm drops running in rivulets across his exposed flesh. He sat atop Balor's Needle, the tallest structure for miles. His feet hung out over the edge of the metal precipice, while a vertical iron post between his thighs gave him something to hold on to. Apparently unaware of the storm raging in all its glory around him, he looked out into the darkness. With each new flash of lightning, a spectacular vista was briefly exposed, only to fade back into blackness a few seconds later. How fitting.

A magical haze, darker than the night itself, flickered around the mage. He could sense almost every being in the entire palace, except the one who mattered most. Numair allowed himself to sink into his magic. Right at the core of his being, he located the thread which connected him to her. Reaching out, he followed it until he found her, wet and alone, propped against a tree in the garden._ Oh, Daine! If only I were worthy of your love._

Some time before the midnight hour, the storm finally wearing itself down, Numair sat in bed trying to concentrate on a book in his hands. Outside his door, Daine hesitated in an agony of indecision. She must reassure him of her feelings before he left, but to do so would involve telling him about why she had hit him. She wanted desperately to apologize and be welcomed back into his heart, but she was also afraid that afterwards, he would be utterly repulsed and unable to look at her, let alone touch her. Daine, whether she recognized it herself or not, was the type of person who could never completely believe in another's love, when she felt herself so unworthy of it. In Numair, she saw a man she loved so much it hurt, but who saw her as an image of perfection rather than a flawed individual. She didn't know if, when she finally told him, he would be able to forgive her, and that terrified her more than anything.

Taking a deep breath, Daine knocked on the door, just as she had that fateful day almost a year ago when she had come for her first lessons. As if reading her thoughts from the other side of the door, he answered with his same, ""You know you don't have to knock, Magelet!" It was this, more than anything, that chased her doubts away.

She opened the door, and sat on the foot of his cot as he set his book down gratefully. As always, his face was composed and attentive, but tonight she read more than a hint of sadness behind those deep muddy eyes. She began to speak, "Numair, about this afternoon, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that, but then, when you were kissing me and... you know, well, I started to see things. I saw my father, and Ozorne and Inar Hadensra, and even Perin. I saw you riding away, and I saw you yelling at me that you didn't love me, and looking back at me that day on the stairs with such scorn in your eyes.

"You know how I said it would take me time to forgive you? Well, I was wrong. I forgave you the moment I saw you in the hospital, I just didn't know it. The person I couldn't forgive was myself," she paused, but he nodded at her to continue. "When you kissed me, I was still holding on to all the things I find wrong with myself, so much so that I didn't believe you could ever love me completely. Some part of me still can't, but even if it's some sort of dream, I want to keep dreaming it if it means I can be with you forever. I'm sorry, Numair, that I don't trust myself enough to believe in you entirely. But I do love you," she looked up at last to meet his eyes. "Gods, I do love you," she said, and without even knowing how it happened she was crying in his arms, as he held her tightly and whispered her name again and again.

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Later that night, Daine woke up in the dark. Still in tunic and breeches, she wondered momentarily where she was, until she heard Numair mumble in his sleep beside her. Strangely alert, she rolled toward him, and reaching out a hand to find him facing her, wearing only an undertunic and breeches. Not entirely sure of herself, she shifted closer, and placed a tentative palm against his stomach under the tunic. More confidently, she began to slide the hand upwards toward his chest, moving in for a soft kiss. It was only when her lips brushed his own that Numair jerked awake. When he registered her hand on his chest, he raised a concerned eyebrow. "Sweet, are you sure you want to do this?"

She kept her mouth over his, and whispered against it "Yes, Numair, yes. I want to." It was all the assurance he needed to kiss her deeply, desire rapidly flooding his veins and bringing him to full consciousness. He rolled on top of her, supporting his long body with knees and elbows over her own slight one. Tunics (and, on Daine's part, a breastband) were discarded rapidly in between eager kisses. When Numair's chest was exposed for the second time that day, Daine didn't waste the opportunity.

She instead reached a hand behind his back to pull him closer, edging down in the bed to kiss his neck, his chest, his stomach. She ran an explorative tongue once around the rim of his navel, causing him to moan softly above her. Grazing a nipple with her teeth produced the same effect, before she returned again to his mouth, this time to initiate the kiss. Her teeth scraped his bottom lip once lightly, then again harder. Her tongue parted his lips and traced the backs of his top teeth. Her hands pushed his hips against her own.

Numair felt himself growing warm, enflamed by her touch. He was both surprised and dismayed by the prowess with which his Daine, usually so innocent, now taunted him. His breeches were already uncomfortably tight, but he refused to hasten the process by moving more quickly than she might want. He would _not_ rush her, even if it was her choice to do this thing tonight. But _Mithros_, he didn't know if he could stand it much longer.

As if on command, the young woman beneath him began to fidget with the waistband of his breeches. He allowed her to unbutton them, gasping slightly each time her hand brushed against his crotch. She pushed them down and he kicked them off his legs, naked but for a loincloth. But when he felt her hands move towards her own breeches, he stopped her. "Let me," he whispered against her shoulder. She froze instantly, allowing him to remove the clothing in silence, though he felt her shiver when he pushed them down her thighs. Numair was disconcerted to find she wore no undergarments beneath, and paused for a minute to drink in the sight of her whole body naked under him. "Daine..." he was silenced by her hands removing his loincloth, and bent his head to tenderly kiss each of her breasts.

Without warning, her thumb began to play across the line of black hair on his abdomen, making him hiss out a breath between his teeth. He grabbed her hand to stop her before he could do what his body was screaming at him to do. He positioned himself between her thighs, drew back to look at her. "Daine, love, I wish I could tell you this won't hurt. If you want me to..." she just smiled up at him, so sweetly that he wanted to cry. Instead, he brought his hips down, but paused again. Daine, quite without warning, brought her hips up and placed her hands behind his buttocks, forcing him into her. Eyes on her face, he saw her soft mouth twist for a second, and then relax again.

He kissed her, so full of love for this woman who was everything he had ever wanted. Then Numair began to move, aware only of the sensation of _her_, covering him, surrounding him tightly, making him whole. He pushed into her again and again, and each time Daine thought she might die of pleasure, so fulfilled by him, so full of him. At last she shivered, her back arched, lights played around her vision while she saw still before her that beloved face, her teacher, her lover. As Daine came, Numair leaned in to kiss her and in doing so came too, shaking, sweating, muscles contracting in time with hers. Then he allowed himself to fall to one side of her, drained and exhausted but completely satisfied.

Daine snuggled close to him, and he wrapped her in his arms. Every inch of her body pressed against his, and her cheek was on his chest as she whispered his name. Half asleep already, he spoke into her hair "sleep tight, magelet."

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The next morning, Numair Salmalín woke to the happiest sight of his life. She was lying there beside him, beautiful even in sleep. He kissed her once softly, then murmured something about getting breakfast. Daine nodded sleepily, rolling over on his cot. _His_ cot, _his_ woman. Numair had never known he could be so possessive.

Walking to the kitchens, he ran into the King in a corridor. He bowed formally, then grinned at his monarch in a way Jonathan found most uncharacteristic. They chatted briefly, but Numair excused himself after stifling a yawn. The King smiled knowingly "Late night, Master Salmalín?" he asked, before strolling away. Numair frowned after his retreating back. It was most unusual... but had the King just winked at him? Dismissing the thought as an impracticality, he continued on his way. Perhaps the kitchens would have some of the honeyed rolls Daine so enjoyed. He picked up his pace, eager to return to his room. To return to his student, to return to his wildmage, to return to his lover. Numair smiled and laughed aloud. He was happy.


End file.
